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In this interview, Michael turns the spotlight on the root assumptions of scarcity and fear that underpin war, sustainability, and other collective crises. He shares his insights into community building, leadership and spiritual living through connecting to a larger source of intelligence, abundance, and healing.

Dr. Powell is an author, clinician, consultant, and researcher of neuroscience and anomalous psychological phenomena. She has been on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, was a member of a part-time think tank on consciousness at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA, and the Director of Research for the John E. Mack Institute. She currently is a member of the Board of Directors of the Jean Houston Foundation. She participated in the United Nations Conference on Women and Children in Beijing in 1995 and is one of the panelists for the PBS documentary, The Science of Peace. Her book, The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena, was written for both scientists and lay people and was published in 2008 by Walker & Company. For more, visit www.dianehennacypowell.com.

What an extraordinary trip! My heart is still filled with joy and gratitude for the special time I was able to spend with the most amazing group of people while visiting Cuba, not to mention a newfound appreciation for the abundance, freedom and power of choice we experience back home...

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Mainstream research has concluded that out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are simply the hallucinatory result of distorted brain functions. Nicholls, an independent researcher inspired to dig deeper by his own out-of-body travels, believes there’s more to it.

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Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.

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This short lesson in the history of paradigm shifts reveals the complexity of these movements and the importance of the many forces at play. The Copernican Revolution didn’t just happen and neither will the next one—but the conditions are ripening.

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The whole experience of enlightenment can be accelerated now because not only do we have the techniques for doing so, which come to us from ancient wisdom traditions, but we have the technology to facilitate and accelerate the learning of these techniques. Every problem that we face, whether it’s war, terrorism, social injustice, economic disparities, or global warming, would be creatively addressed by our collective consciousness moving to a new level.

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It’s true that almost anywhere you go there is a film festival of some kind, but be thankful – they have taken the place of “big cinema” as venues for quality movies that may never see the dark of a Cineplex. This is especially true for movies without the enviable budgets of their studio counterparts or whose uplifting messages or controversial subject matter get passed over for the lucre of lowest-common-denominator filmmaking.

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Jeff Levin, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist and religious scholar, holds a distinguished chair at Baylor University, where he is University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health, Professor of Medical Humanities, and Director of the Program on Religion and Population Health at the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center, where he is a member of the Community of Scholars at the Duke Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health.

Dr. Levin received his AB from Duke University in 1981, graduating Magna Cum Laude and with Distinction in both Religion and Sociology. He received his MPH in 1983 from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and his PhD in Preventive Medicine and Community Health in 1987 from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at The University of Texas Medical Branch. He also completed a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from 1987 to 1989 at the Institute of Gerontology of the University of Michigan, and has additional advanced training in quantitative methods from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Levin is a pioneering scientist whose research and writing beginning in the 1980s helped to create the field of religion, spirituality, and health. He was the first scientist to systematically review the research literature on religion and health, and the first scientist funded by the NIH to conduct research on the topic. His studies have pioneered basic research in the epidemiology of religion and on the impact of religion on the physical and mental health and general well-being of older adults. His research has been funded by several NIH grants, totaling over $1 million in support, and he also has received funding from private sources, including the American Medical Association’s Education and Research Foundation.

Dr. Levin is professionally affiliated with leading organizations at the interface of religion, science, and medicine. This includes serving as the principal Research Area Consultant in the area of public health and medicine for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, as a member of the Extended Faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, as a Past President of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, and as Scientific Chair of the Kalsman Roundtable on Judaism and Health Research at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He was Chairman of the NIH Working Group on Quantitative Methods in Alternative Medicine, is a former member of the NIH Workgroup on Measures of Religiousness and Spirituality for the National Institute on Aging, and is a current or past member of the Editorial Boards of nine peer-reviewed scientific journals, including the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences; The Gerontologist; the Journal of Religion and Health; the Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging; the Journal of Mindbody States; Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine; Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine; the International Journal of Healing and Caring; and EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, in recognition of outstanding career achievement and exemplary contributions to the field of gerontology.

Dr. Levin is the author or co-author of over 150 scholarly publications, as well as over 140 conference presentations and invited lectures and addresses, mostly on the role of religion in physical and mental health and aging. He has published six books, most notably God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality-Healing Connection (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2001). He is also editor of Religion in Aging and Health: Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Frontiers (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994); co-editor of Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1999), Faith, Medicine, and Science: A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. David B. Larson (New York, NY: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2005), and the forthcoming Divine Love: Perspectives from the World’s Religious Traditions (West Conshocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2010); and, co-author of Religion in the Lives of African Americans: Social, Psychological, and Health Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004). According to the Institute for Scientific Information, since 1981 Dr. Levin has been one of the most highly cited social scientists in the world.

Dr. Levin is an internationally known scientist and has lectured throughout the world on most aspects of the interface of religion and health—scientific, clinical, methodological, historical, theological, metaphysical, and with respect to public health and health policy. His research has been featured in many newspapers and magazines, including The Washington Post, USA Today, Newsday, JAMA, Modern Maturity, Tikkun, Moment, Spirituality and Health, and in cover stories in Time, Readers’ Digest, and Macleans, and on national radio and television, including NPR, PBS, CBC, CTV, and CBN. His biography has been included in Who’s Who in Theology & Science, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, and International Who’s Who in Medicine. In 2001, a statement in praise of his work was read into the Congressional Record from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a recipient of both the 1996 and 1997 Templeton Prize for Exemplary Papers in Religion and the Medical Sciences, and of several named or endowed lectureships. In 1997, he served as Distinguished Lecturer in Gerontology at Duke University Medical Center, and delivered the First Annual K.J. Lee Fellowship Lecture in Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 2003, he delivered the First Annual David B. Larson Memorial Lecture in Religion and Health at Duke University Medical Center and the Sixth Annual Richard J. DeBottis Memorial Lecture in Gerontology at the University of Houston. In 2004, he delivered the Second Annual Blair Justice Lecture in Mind-Body Medicine and Public Health at the University of Texas School of Public Health. In 2006, he delivered the Fifth Annual Spirituality and Health Forum Lecture at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

Dr. Levin is married to Dr. Lea Steele, an epidemiologist and human ecologist. Dr. Steele, who will be joining Baylor University as Research Professor in the Institute of Biomedical Studies, is former Scientific Director of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.